Even This
by ncfan
Summary: So this is enough after all. /George x Shannon, spoilers for Ep. 2./


The dialogue and certain sections of Shannon's thoughts are taken from Ep. 2, with or without alteration. Also, George really needs to pay more attention to what Shannon's saying to him. Seriously.

I own nothing.

* * *

She had put a brave face on when serving Beatrice in the VIP room; after all, Shannon is not without a spine, whatever others (_such as Gohda_, a sullen voice strongly resembling Kanon's sounds in the back of her head) might think, and even the Witch should know that. She is grateful to Beatrice for her help in Shannon's relationship with George, however Beatrice had intended it to go, but Shannon will not give him up now to earn a few more hours of life, nor will she break down in hysterics just to amuse the Witch. She is a servant of the Ushiromiya family; she is a servant permitted to wear the crest of the One-Winged Eagle. Shannon knows how to comport herself with more dignity than that.

But when out from under the oppressive presence of the Witch, Shannon's fortitude deserts her, replaced with bitterness.

For what has been a couple of years, but feeling more like a tentatively sweet eternity, Shannon has been pursuing a relationship that ought not to exist. She is furniture, and Ushiromiya George is human. These two things are incompatible, and while a human can love furniture, furniture can never honestly love or be loved. They can only build love based on deception, and then watch the rotten fruits of their labors implode in their hands once the deception is uncovered. Shannon had had hope, though, and she had found herself growing more human in her heart with every day. Surely then she would have found fruition and fulfillment.

Shannon can not be happy, though, for she sees all her hopes coming to naught before her eyes.

The Witch is here, and Shannon knows what she wants. Beatrice the Golden wishes for her full power and wealth to be returned to her, and she will boldly take everything from everyone else in order to have that. At the ninth twilight, none shall be left alive. The lives of every living being on this island, human and furniture alike, is the required payment to restore Beatrice's power. She will kill everything. She will tear flesh from bone. She will cleave spirit from flesh. She will rend love from spirit. The future is dead as dust. All Shannon can do is wait for the inevitable, and put a brave face on for the sake of her love.

But she must still appear disheartened as she arrives at the meeting place she and George had planned on, under the cover of darkness and torrential rains. Beatrice's appearance in the mansion must have caused quite a stir amongst the family, for he quizzes her at length about the Witch. Shannon tells him faint-hearted lies about the nature of her connection to Beatrice, which George laps up willingly—_and she is glad of that; never does Shannon wish for him to know exactly what she did in order to be with him_—no doubt wishing to disbelieve that his gentle love could have anything to do with any of the dicey business of the inheritance. But once he's done asking about Beatrice, he must see her pale face, because his own expression falters, grows uncomfortable, and he looks away.

_I wish he would ask. I wish he would ask more closely. About Beatrice-sama, about my life here. I wish he would ask why I look so sad. I wish he would ask me why I call myself furniture. I wish he'd ask what furniture is._

_Oh well. I suppose I should be glad that George-san is so incurious about all that; any explanation would be horrific. As it should be._

_The door to the Golden Land is opening. Once upon a time, I would have been happy about that. When I was furniture, and untroubled by human cares, I would have been grateful to receive my eternal rest, free from all further cares. I would have easily and gladly prostrated myself before Beatrice-sama, just to have a chance of entering. It would not have mattered how thoroughly I had to degrade myself; even the slightest chance of entering the Golden Land would have been worth it. How do you degrade furniture, anyway? Furniture already possesses a contemptible existence, beyond empathy, beyond sympathy, even beyond base pity. The closest anyone can come to feeling sorry for furniture is to feel shame on their behalf for the disgraceful state of their bodies._

_I should still be happy. Even if I accept George-san's ring, I will never be able to marry him, but what right do I have to be married anyways? George-san is human, and I am furniture. I lack the human flesh needed to be married to a human. I could make-believe, I could dream, but that's all it was. A dream. My hopes of loving and being loved by him, of being married, it was only a dream I had._

"…What's wrong?" He shifts uncomfortably on his damp seat in the gazebo, staring at her forehead rather than at her eyes. "…You really haven't looked well for a while now."

Shannon shrugs her shoulders, fiddling with the hem of her black skirt. She stares down at her shoes and the ground beneath them, struggling even to make her voice sound over the steady pounding of the rain. "George-san… What does it mean… to be engaged?" she asks faintly. _You see, I'm really not sure. No one expects furniture to become engaged or get married, so no one ever bothers to explain it to us. But I'm sure you could, so please…_

George looks startled at that, and he fumbles over his first words, tongue-tied. A fresh wave of mortification sweeps over Shannon, uncomfortably reminiscent of nausea, seeing him so obviously confused over why she's asking him something seemingly so simple. But then, he meets her gaze properly for the first time all evening, as serious as he possibly can be, and says, "It means making a promise to marry. But I think that means it's the same thing as marriage. Honestly, I want to marry you right now."

_Oh? _Shannon blinks, and stares at him, eyes wide.

He casts his gaze out the window and grins ruefully. "We could go outside and exchange vows, with God and the rain as the only witnesses we'd need. Then I could take you back home." His grin fades, though the ruefulness is still right there on his face. "But I'm still in training, and I'm a long way from being where I need to be to build my own 'castle.' I suppose that's why I want to stick my chest out and take you home with me.

"It's just three more years. But I don't want us to have to lie about our feelings to the face of my family for the next three years. So I decided to give you an engagement ring. I suppose it's a shameful reason to do so, because I'm basically admitting that I can't support a wife the way I am now. That's a pretty shameful thing for a man to admit to, but there you—"

Her face lights up in a sweet, radiant smile, effectively cutting off any further word of George's. "Thank you. Thank you very much. So an engagement ring isn't just a gift you'd give to any lover."

George grows flustered again. They joke and discuss things more seriously, George explaining an engagement ring's actual purpose and Shannon giggling and teasing him about wanting to "stake his claim" on her so no one else comes around trying to snatch Shannon away. George's face goes red as a beet as he tries to explain, and Shannon's giggling turns to bright laughter.

_So that's what an engagement ring is. A promise between lovers given form, their hopes and dreams siphoned into a band of metal, as though you've imbued the ring with charms against injury and ill fortune. That makes sense. That makes perfect sense._

_It also sounds like…_

He makes promises of love and devotion, admitting as he does so to possessing a jealous streak, even if doesn't do so consciously and probably wouldn't appreciate having it pointed out to him. Shannon doesn't mind that, however; she'd had no hope of ever having a grand romance, or a romance of any sort, and to hear a man admit that he doesn't want anyone else to have her sounds wonderful after that. It's amazing how much lighter her heart feels, but there are still questions in it, still things she needs to confirm. And a cold tendril still exists, weaker now, but persistent and difficult to be rid of.

_But would you still want to give me your ring, if you knew that I would never be able to fulfill the promises I made to you? Would you still want to give me your ring, if you knew that the promises _we _made to each other would never be fulfilled? Would you?_

Wait. He's already given her the answer. He had said to her, just now, that an engagement is the same as marriage, and that an engagement ring is practically the same thing as a wedding ring. So that means that now, just now, they are already married, and any promises they've made to one another have already been fulfilled, even if they are offered up in the Witch's resurrection ceremony. And then he says it, the words that are just icing on the cake: _"From now on, this isn't an engagement. It's a wedding ring."_

Her face goes red; now that's just a little too quick. "Is it alright… I mean… Is it just alright to say that we're married without God's blessing?"

By George, it's enough for them to say that they're married and mean it; God, Eva and Hideyoshi don't have to know about it beforehand. Shannon supposes that George was raised on the "_It's better to seek forgiveness than ask permission" _school of thought. The thoughts of him discovering her to be furniture, though the thoughts of his love for her turning to hate, right here, right now, with only the rain as witness, are daunting indeed, but she shakes it off.

A marriage is about looking at someone today, tomorrow, and in old age, whether with the eyes in your head or the eyes in your mind, and still wanting to be with them, even then. A marriage is saying to someone at the age of twenty-three "I want to be with you", and still being able to imagine yourself saying that at eighty-three. Those words give her heart, and though talk of children and grandchildren takes something of that heart away, she still feels warmth unfurling in her chest, and she smiles, more softly now, but no less radiant than it has always been when thinking of love and thinking of what an ideal future would be.

"Will it surely come… Please… Show me."

He fumbles with the ring in its box in his pocket, but stops when he sees the beginning of tears gathering at her eyes. Shannon looks at him, looks past him, his skin and his eyes and all the baggage of these troubled days. "Please show me that future," she says with conviction, her smile widening slightly.

"…Yeah… I will. I promise. Today, once we've grown old, and even after we've died. Even if we become spirits, we'll always be together."

So it's alright then.

It's alright if they die, today, or tomorrow.

Shannon wipes away her tears, accepts his ring with a smile more dazzling than the diamond that sits atop it, and slides it on the ring finger of her left hand, where a wedding band should always go. "You won't have to wait until tomorrow morning, George-san," she remarks lightly, holding her hand up so the diamond catches the light of the lamps outside and the ring she wears is plainly visible. Her heart, once leaden, is now buoyant. Shannon feels giddy, as all her fears and doubts melt away. She is lighter than air.

_Even if we die, we will always be together._

_Yes, I think I understand that. We are married now, and the image of the future is in our eyes, as real as though we had lived it ourselves, and no less valued. Even an imagined future is equivalent to a real one, and even this is as real as a wedding before God, a pastor, and your family. So it's alright if we don't ever actually live out that future, because it will always have been real in our hearts._

_Thank you. Now I can face what is to come with no regrets. No regrets at all._


End file.
